Santa's Fairy Tales: Vol. 1 (1964, 1987)

... aka: Santa's Fairy Tales: Volume One

Directed by:

"Manuel San Fernando" (prolly K. Gordon Murray)

This 1987 VHS release from United American Video Corp., which probably sold a zillion copies around Christmastime in the late 80s, is the perfect embodiment of what scam art distributors would regularly release to hapless consumers back in the day. I can imagine many unsuspecting parents picking this up for their kids, popping it in when they got home and being irate at making their kids suffer through promotional videos for an incredibly lame looking and outdated theme park. Even worse, instead of getting the heartwarming family fun they'd anticipated, their little ones ended up traumatized for life! Containing two 1960s short subjects (Santa's Enchanted Village and Santa's Magic Kingdom) and with a running time falling well short of the claimed 30 minutes, these two mini-films were nothing more than PR for Santa's Village amusement parks. At one time there were a handful of these parks scattered around the U.S. in places like Santa Cruz and Skyforest, California and East Dundee, Illinois. By 1977, after Santa's Village Corporation filed for bankruptcy, some of these parks closed for good while others remained open, though under new ownership and with new names and new attractions. The location in Skyforest (near Lake Arrowhead) became Skypark at Santa's Village, while the Dundee location currently operates at Santa's Village AZoosment Park.

You may be wondering why something like this would even be covered here. Well, let's hear from a few unsatisfied former child customers via the Youtube comments section...

• "So creepy." - dan Hamakua
• "My brother and I used to have this on a VHS...we were just talking about it. It always creeped us both out." - Life Unpaged
• "When I was 4 my mom rented a VHS tape from some church. It had this damn thing on it instead of the Christmas cartoons we were expecting. I dreamed night after night that the skunk thing was in my basement and had me cornered, speaking in its nasally squeaks. Years of trying to make my parents remember the tape followed. Only my brother shared the same fear so I knew it was real in some way. I stumbled upon this 3 days ago and showed the rest of my family. My mom instantly knew what it was, but said she blocked it from her memory "so she didn't have to think about it anymore." - Santa's Ashes
• "I'm horrified" - ?Mystery Nyan?
• "Glad to know the title of this. Now my therapist will stop thinking I'm insane." - awfulsails

Both of these shorts were directed by one "Manuel San Fernando," who I'm pretty sure is actually one K. Gordon Murray. Murray was best known for cheaply acquiring the rights to Mexican movies like SANTA CLAUS (1959) and LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND THE MONSTERS (1962), dubbing and re-editing them and then releasing them as children's matinee features. Murray also handled more adult-oriented sci-fi and horror films from South of the border, but his family movies are most remembered due to the fact they typically horrified the children who viewed them. However, Murray was also involved in a few of this own productions, which is where these shorts came from. As a 13-year-old teen delinquent once said on The Maury Show, "It's all about the fast money, baby!" and Murray apparently made a fortune doing what he did.

Santa's Enchanted Village opens with recycled footage from the 1959 Santa Claus showing us Santa's magical outer space kingdom. Thanks to Merlin the Magician's discovery of the "5th Dimension," Santa is able to be countless places at once (like at every Santa's Village in the U.S., of course!) and also has many different homes (like every Satan's Village across the U.S.!). His village has all of the necessities, like a reindeer barn, a toy workshop filled with slave laborers (the boys are "elves" and the girls are "pixies"), a "chapel of the good shepherd" (?!) and even a (much too small!) North Pole despite not being like, ya know, anywhere near the North Pole.

Mistaking the pole for ice cream, Stinky the Skunk starts licking it and gets his ass chewed out by Puss 'N Boots. He then goes to his toy workshop job and leaves again, which infuriates his boss, The Ferocious Wolf, who then grumbles incomprehensibly and goes after him. That culminates with the wolf beating the skunk with a tree branch (!) in front of a bunch of children at a puppet theater (!) Santa Claus is shown several times, robotically laughing in an incredibly disturbing manner at the various events. The combination of tuneless accordion music, fog-enshrouded buildings shot at Dutch angles, giant mushrooms (!) everywhere and nightmarish-looking characters really does turn this into a creepy experience.

Next up is Santa's Magic Kingdom, which starts with Santa giving us a tour of his village as he takes his sleigh and reindeer hostages into the dark recesses of an ice cave, and then cuts to Merlin the Magician taking over the tour cause he can do it quicker using the - you guessed it! - "5th Dimension." The horrifying sights that follow include a 6-foot-rabbit riding a train that looks about a 10 mph gust of wind away from falling right off the tracks, manic depressive whistles and a slumped-over, dead-eyed jack-in-the-box. We also gets to see the Easter Bunny's home, a post office, a gingerbread house and a toy factory, all accompanied by stolen horror movie music (?) Unlike the previous short, this one attempts something of a plot after awhile.

Puss 'N Boots, chief of the theme park security, has received reports of an ogre who's about to attack the village. As a princess rushes off to warn Santa, Puss encounters the ogre, who looks less like an ogre and more like a plaster dinosaur head. The "ogre" then threatens "Where are you Santa Claus? I am looking for you! And when I find you, I am going to destroy you and your villages!" Merlin then must do battle with the "ogre" which takes place entirely off-screen and then we're treated to the cast singing along to some operatic vocal that never once matches their lip movements. Eegads. It's very rare that I watch something that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever but I'm really struggling here!

The same company also released "Santa's Fairy Tales: Volume Two," which features two more ancient shorts again "presented by" Jeffrey C. Hogue. The first is Murray's Santa Claus and His Helpers, which was yet another Santa's Village promo video featuring the same characters and shot at the same time. It, and the other two, were edited by future hardcore porno director Jack Remy. The other is The Magic Snowman, a re-title of the 1944 German short Der Schneemann (aka Christmas in July), which is at least a proper piece of animation.

NO STARS!

Santa Claus (1959)

... aka: Santa Claus vs. the Devil

Directed by:

René Cardona

"Ken Smith" (K. Gordon Murray) (U.S. version only)

I for one could use a little faux holiday cheer today after getting up at 6am, driving an hour to my car dealership and sitting in the waiting room for 2 1/2 hours just for them to tend to a (very minor) recall. That was followed by a trip to Kohl's where they only had small and XXL sizes of the hoodie I wanted, and then Wal-Mart, which was packed so they decided to open three registers and let the self-checkouts do the rest so I was stuck in line for 30 minutes, and then IHOP, for a disappointing stack of under-cooked double blueberry pancakes, which concluded with me giving the waitress a 20 dollar tip just because I was desperate to see someone - anyone - fucking smile by that point. Well, let's just say it wasn't my best of days, so Christmas in July it is! Besides, we can't let the Hallmark Channel and QVC have all the fun, can we?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but... Everything you thought you knew about Santa Claus is a lie! He lives at the North Pole? Not exactly. He resides far up in the heavens deep in outer space a zillion miles above the North Pole. Lives in a cozy, humble little abode? No. He actually lives the lap of luxury in a giant crystal palace floating on a cloud. Not particularly religious? Catholic. Elves as helpers? Nope. Children from around the globe (including China, Japan, Africa, Italy, the U. S., Mexico and "The Orient") have apparently been kidnapped and forced to work in his toy factory sweatshop, where they sing (terrible!) songs in their (terrible!) off-key, cracking voices and do things stereotypical to the region. The U. S. ones, for instance, are dressed like little cowpokes, strum guitars and treat us to an ear-splitting rendition of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" while the Mexican representatives do only a slightly better job with "La Cucaracha." And I don't even really want to get into the drum beating child savages from Africa. While the kids "sing," Santa (José Elías Moreno) bangs on an organ making wide-eyed expressions like a deranged maniac.

Meanwhile, in hell (!!), "Lucifer, the King of Hades" gets upset when he catches all of his red horned demon men dancing around and enjoying themselves. He banishes them all except for one: Pitch (José Luis Aguirre 'Trotsky'), the leader of the demons. Lucifer gives him one objective: To go to Earth and make all of the children do evil things because he wants to piss off his "bearded old goat" nemesis.

Santa Claus and his sidekick Pedro (Cesáreo Quezadas aka 'Pulgarcito', who played Tom Thumb in the demented LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD AND THE MONSTERS and went on to do some even more demented things in real life) then use their high powered telescope to spy on some children in Mexico. A trio of little hoodlums ("The devil likes rude boys!") are coerced into pelting an animatronic Santa with rocks, to which Santa solemnly notes: "They will be punished in due course." Restoring his faith in humanity somewhat is poor little Lupita (Lupita Quezadas), whose only dream is to own a doll. Like the proverbial "demon over the shoulder," Pitch attempts to persuade her to shoplift one since her mother (Nora Veryán) can't afford to buy it but Lupita resists the urge and puts it back on the shelf. Good girl, Lupita.

Not content with spying on kids as they go about their daily lives, Santa takes the "he knows when you are sleeping" thing to a creepy new extreme by also using his "dream-scope" to keep tabs on what children are dreaming about! "Little Rich Boy" Billy (Antonio Díaz Conde hijo), for example, has dreams about two giant gifts under the tree with his parents inside because he merely wants more of their time. Lupita's dream, tainted by Pitch when he blows on her (!) while she's sleeping, involves her being in some cavernous, foggy void where two-faced dolls emerge from coffin-like boxes and do a dance routine before trying to convince her that she needs to be just a little evil to get what she wants out of life. I guess he does have a point.

After a montage of kids writing Santa and mailing out their letters, which the post office promptly throws into an oven (!) Christmas Eve finally arrives and uber-jolly Saint Nick (who never stops laughing) and his assistants rush to get all of their stuff together. The absent-minded Merlin the Magician (Armando Arriola) gives Santa a "flower to disappear" which enables him to become invisible and concocts a "magic dust" sleeping powder so that Santa can drug kids (!!) who stay up too late, while a blacksmith (Ángel Di Stefani) creates a golden key he can use to break-and-enter into chimney-less homes. After his sled is loaded, his robot reindeer whisk him off through space to Earth, where he encounters numerous problems in Mexico City.

The three evil boys plot to jump Santa, tie him up, kidnap him, make him their slave (!!) and then steal all of his toys and candy. Meanwhile, Pitch does what he can to try to prevent Santa from delivering all of his gifts, including moving chimneys, trying to set his ass on fire, making a doorknob red hot by blowing on it and trying to kill him by unleashing a dog and trying to trick people into shooting him. Santa retaliates a few times, like shooting Pitch in the ass with a toy cannon, but is mostly up a tree at the finale begging Merlin for help.

This has been popping in and out of IMDb's Bottom 100 list since the list has existed (note: as of this writing it's no longer on there), frequently shows up on "Worst Movies of All Time" lists and there are versions available with MST3K and Rifftrax "riffing" it in case you don't want to come up with your own wisecracks. But is the movie itself really that bad? That is a question I simply cannot answer. It's complicated.

For starters, any criticisms about the film being ridiculous and silly should automatically be discounted because, let's face it, every Santa Claus movie in existence is silly and ridiculous when we get right down to it. This is a fairy tale about a fictional character magically zapping around one night of the year giving out billions of presents we're talking about here, not reality, folks. Does it really matter if Santa lives at the North Pole or in space? Are toy robot reindeer any sillier than the U.S. version of actual magical reindeer that sometimes talk? Of course not. Knocking Mexican Santa mythology, at least per this film, merely because it deviates from your culture's representation of the character is sillier than anything you'll actually see in this movie. However, that also doesn't mean one can't marvel at or be amused by the differences, which I was at times and you'll no doubt also be.

It's also impossible to give this completely fair shakes due to the horribly-dubbed English language version courtesy of K. Gordon Murray, which relies heavily on new, perfunctory and often extremely dumb narration. I've no clue how the original Spanish language version stacks up but we all know how bad dubbing can ruin an otherwise perfectly fine film. That said, this is clearly not a perfectly fine film from a technical vantage point! While the sets and costumes are fun at times, the film is heavily padded, posits Santa as a mythical God stand-in in a basic religionized good vs. evil morality play and has plenty of irritating moments (it truly does take an iron will to make it past the ten-minute-long opening musical number!) to go along with the more amusing stuff. It's also extremely sentimental and schmaltzy at times, but the same can be said for most other holiday films and it has a few honestly affecting moments. But what this is really best known for nowadays is the high-for-a-kid's-movie creepiness factor. Many viewers of a certain age even remember being somewhat traumatized seeing this when they were young and I can fully understand why!

I'm sure Murray made an absolute fortune off of this when he released it as a children's matinee feature back in the day. In fact, it was still playing theaters as a seasonal Christmas film well into the 1970s! It was also shown often on TV and, heavily marketed as a bad movie cult feature, has been released numerous times on VHS and DVD by nearly every budget label under the sun.

★★